Spells (original 2009; edition 2009)

I was excited to find this book when I saw the cute cover, but I wasn't under its spell like I expected. At first I thought the sliced pages had been done by a former reader of this book! Still, a cute enough read. ( )

Our library finally got our copy of Spells and I read it straight away! And then read it again! And then played with the spells until finally I decided I had better get it out on the shelves so that some child may find this wonderful book.

In Spells, a frog finds a book and wishes it was so many other things that he tears up the book in his imaginative play. He even wishes that he himself were a handsome prince, yet he was still just a small green frog. Frog then realizes that the book is a book of spells, and he works at putting a page for a spell back together to change himself into a handsome prince with hilarious results. Spells is as quirky and funny as Gravett's other books, and her illustrations are amazingly cool mixed up collages. Not the easiest book to ready during storytime (due to the half sheet pages when frog is working on the spell), but definitely fun to share one on one.
( )

Spells is an exquisitely illustrated, creative spin-off of the princess and the frog tale, with most of the story being about the frog and his quest to be more than just a frog. An ordinary frog happens upon a spell book, which he tears to shreds while pretending to be a pirate and a prince. The frog spots a shard of paper for a spell that will make him into a handsome price and the games begin: for both the reader and the frog. A series of illustrations cut horizontally across the middle allow for mixing and matching the spells that cause the prince to transform into a rabbit, a bird, a frog or a “brog,” a “fabbit,” and a “rird,” among a plethora of other combinations. The story can be as long or as short as the reader’s imagination, until eventually the frog becomes a prince. He meets a princess, whose kiss transforms him—back into a frog. The end is a fun pleasant surprise that reinforces the spirit of enchantment and imagination upon which the book is based. Like Hervé Tullet’s Press Here, this book doubles as an interactive game that teaches kids different ways to play with sounds and syllables, or they can just intermittently giggle and marvel at the magical illustrations. Highly Recommended. ( )

A small frog with a big imagination finds a book of spells, and after some experimentation, turns himself into a handsome prince. The book is full of clever wordplay, rhymes, stunning illustrations, and more to the story on the front and back inside cover pages (personal ad; fine print warning for book of spells). Kids can conjure up other spells and imagine which rhyming combinations would make new animals.

Curriculum: this book would be fun to use to develop phonemic awareness (clever, made-up rhymes) and emergent decoding skills (nonsense word fluency).

Gravett, E. (2009). Spells. New York: Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers.

This book is a great story about a frog who wants to read a book about anything except what the book is about. When he discovers that the book has a spell which could turn him into a prince. He goes through a series of wrong spells in which the reader can choose which parts of diffrent animals he can turn into because the pages are cut in half allowing you to turn just the top half or the bottom half. He finally turns himself into a prince only to be turned back into a frog. The story is great to show children that no matter who you try to become you will always just simply be you, which is the best person anyways. It also gives the reader the chance to control the way the story goes, and the story can be different each time they read it. ( )